Rediscovering India’s Forgotten Masterpieces in London

BBC | CULTURE
By Rahul Verma
Family of Gulam Khan, Six Recruits, Fraser Album, c. 1815, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institute). Ghulam Ali Khan was a the court painter for Mughal emperors Akbar II and Bahadur Shah II
They were simply labelled ‘Company Painting’ and ‘Company School’; but some artworks assigned to a niche bureaucratic category are now being recognised as masterpieces. Paintings commissioned by patrons of the East India Company during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries are currently on show in an exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London. Forgotten Masters – Indian Painting for the East India Company focuses on artists who were previously neglected. According to its curator, historian William Dalrymple, they should be celebrated as “major artists of the greatest capabilities”. [More]